From Hamburg, Germany, Chris “The Lord” Harms bring to the surface another collection of gloomy, melancholic, but heavy songs in which dark textures, edgy guitar riffs, gothic roots, glam rock echoes and industrial approaches are build into a powerful construction. Influences comes from Type O Negative to Marilyn Manson with strong accent on the gothic roots, and between these two references, Lord of The Lost create a vibrating and intense blending.
Chris Harms started out as vocalist and guitarist for industrial rock band Philiae in 1999 till 2004 when he switched to The Pleasures, band from the glam rock scene. But Chris kept one foot in the gothic scene as the singer of the electro/industrial project Unterart since 2006. In 2007 Chris joined as stage guitarist the band Big Boy and in 2008 he bring to life his new project, this Lord Of the Lost with guitarist Sensai (ex-The Pleasures), guitarist Sebsta, bass player Class and drummer Any. Read more Lord Of The Lost – Antagony (2011)
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Introitus – Elements (2011)
Introitus are another fine band from Sweden. Digging into the fields of neo-progressive area of rock filled with nice electronic textures, the band gathering around Mats Bender and his wife, Anna and the duo became a 7 members band including their own children Mattias and Johanna on drum and respectively as additional drummer. On extra synth, accordion, flute, fiddle and second guitar is Henrik Björlind, Pär Helje play the lead guitar and on bass is Dennis Lindqvis. “Elements” is their second full-length album following up “Fantasy” and its consist of 9 elaborated songs. It’s a colorful and flowing blend of classic and modern progressive elements extremely nicely combined into a new dimension. They have parallels from Yes through Marillion up to Dream Theater exploring a very wide open area of sounds and managed to blending them into their own. Read more Introitus – Elements (2011)
Kingdom Come – Rendered Waters (2011)
Kingdom Come stir some interest back in ’88 when some of the listeners thought that Kingdom Come was actually a Led Zeppelin reunion. And their self-titled debut album was actually a nice piece of hard rock/blues rock collection of songs, almost similar to the sound and style of the legendary English rock band Led Zeppelin, actually they almost ripping their riffs right off.
The group was formed in 1987 after the breakup of Wolf’s previous project called Stone Fury. Wolf’s A&R man, Derek Shulman and record company, Polygram, allowed him exclusive freedom to assemble Kingdom Come’s lineup and direct its sound, and Wolf recruited Pittsburgh-based lead guitarist Danny Stag, guitarist Louisvillians Rick Steier, drummer James Kottak and from Northern Californian, bass player Johnny B. Frank. Stag and Frank had previously been members of the bands WWIII and Population 5.
In 1988, the band released its debut LP, Kingdom Come. The band’s first single, “Get It On,” was a big enough hit on AOR stations that the band’s eponymous debut went gold, meanwhile receiving platinum certificate.
In 1989, Kingdom Come released their next LP, called “In Your Face”. However, the album failed to sell well and all members other than Wolf quit the group. Read more Kingdom Come – Rendered Waters (2011)
The Black Dots Of Death – Ever Since We Were Children (2011)
Michael Shawn “Clown” Crahan, also known by his number #6 in Slipknot, is an American musician, music producer, and artist, he also is interested in photography and painting. He is best known as one of the two custom percussionists of Slipknot, but also the drummer of To My Surprise and Dirty Little Rabbits. The Black Dots Of Death is the project he’s involved most recently and this “Ever Since We Were Children” is their sick, but convincing debut album. Hard to label very explicitly this material, The Black Dots Of Death twisting around the borders of rock from its roots to the post rock, horror rock and industrial area, but they include also post grunge tunes and trip hop elements and surprisingly they are heavy without being noisy at all, they are absolutely sick, but still kind of… beautiful. Well, maybe I’m sick and pervert as well, but I really like this shit. “I’m sorry that I failed you, I’m sorry I wasn’t there, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I really don’t fucking care!” Say that again! 😆 Read more The Black Dots Of Death – Ever Since We Were Children (2011)
Death Cab For Cutie – Codes and Keys (2011)
The upcoming seventh studio album by Death Cab For Cutie, set to be released on May 31, 2011 contains 11 quiet, kind of “interiorized”, intimate songs, as Benjamin Gibbard and Nick Harmer have declared before, this album is “a much less guitar-centric album than we’ve ever made before”.
The first single, “You are a Tourist”, was made available for online stream on March 28, 2011 on the band’s official site.And “You Are Turist” – just like the other 10 tracks – is a nice, quiet song build upon a minimalist orchestral construction, the voice of Ben Gibbard lead as through a mysterious space filled up with a lonely acoustic guitar tune and a few discrete synth colors, only drummer Jason McGerr smashes off his drum kit and at the end of the track they introduced a nice turn into a much sunnier theme, but only for a few moments to create a nice contrast. Read more Death Cab For Cutie – Codes and Keys (2011)
The Tape Disaster – Realidade Aumentada (2011)
Mainly in rock/metal circles the mention of Brasilia bring up almost exclusively the name of Sepultura. Cliche or not, that’s a fact. Ratos de Porato for many still remains an unknown name. Anyway, a few days ago I was excited (and surprised) by MindFlow, a powerful and intense progressive (post) metal/hardcore band, now I’m listening into this “Realidade Aumentada” by The Tape Disaster and it’s quit a pleasant surprise. Waving around progressive and indie rock tunes, The Tape Disaster put together a beautiful world of images and sounds, they write a couple of nice tunes and some great songs shifting between moments of calm and dynamic twists. Unfortunately they don’t have a singer, but even exclusively with instrumental resources they managed to fill up the spaces and create a colorful and flowing material. Read more The Tape Disaster – Realidade Aumentada (2011)
Iperyt – No State Of Grace (2011)
Called “extreme terror hardcore techno” it may sound even sicker than a sick innovation that it is. These guys from Poland delivered a contorted blend of black/death metal with merciless industrial noises. Grinding tempos, killer guitar riffs, Slayer like screaming vocals seems to be their winning recipe. And it’s working like a chainsaw. More important, they managed to write not only powerful mixtures of furious black metal and death/grind slaughters with industrial after touch, but they have a couple of great songs: “A Pocket Size Armageddon”, ” The Antithesis”, “Scars Are Sexy”,”Keep Your Eyes Closed”,”The Player”.
Iperty sounds just like a killer jam between Slayer and Bile. Read more Iperyt – No State Of Grace (2011)
A Swarm Of The Sun – Zenith (2010)
I actually miss this one last year, but thanks to Erik Nilsson, I had the pleasure to listen this Swedish duo’s full-length debut album now. A Swarm of the Sun was formed in 2007 in Stockholm by Erik Nilsson and Jakob Berglund and they released the EP “The King of Everything†in the same year on Erik’s independent record-label Version Studio. “Zenith” was released on August 30, 2010 and their influences including a number of different genres from post rock and indie rock to assorted electronics and film score like music. It’s a gloomy, but colorful blending, their music shifting from slow glowing textures and spacy dimensions to powerful rock explosions, it’s flowing and floating, warm and cold moments, elements are melting down or sometimes frozen into a strange, touching soundscape. Read more A Swarm Of The Sun – Zenith (2010)
Thursday – No Devolucion (2011)
If someone still recalls the “genre” named AOR, then Thursday probably may be labeled as adult oriented hardcore. From emo they come a long way, but up to date, Thursday are a mature band, their music is dense, but still mysteriously airy, discrete pianos and nervous guitar riffs are nicely overlapping and shifting from mood to mood. “No Devolución” it’s like Sigur Rós plays some Fugazi songs. It’s strange, but beautiful, almost hypnotic.
Thursday was formed in 1997 and in the summer of 1999, teamed up with MP3.com for their first official release, the 1999 “Summer Tour” EP. Their debut album, “Waiting” was released on December 6, 1999 on Eyeball Records without any singles or support from television or radio. Hesitant to join a larger label, but with full support from Eyeball Records, Thursday signed to Victory Records and released their second album, “Full Collapse” in 2001. Victory Records filmed a music video for “Understanding in a Car Crash” consisting of live footage of the band and marketed the song as the band’s first single, without the band’s authorization. The video for this song received heavy airplay on both MTV2 and Muchmusic. The song gained the band a large underground following. Read more Thursday – No Devolucion (2011)
The Residents – Lonely Teenager (2011)
The Residents are for a quit long time around and since the end of the 60s they explore the experimental/avant-garde area of the music releasing over 40 albums, but also they explored the multimedia area. Pioneers in exploring the potential of CD-ROM and similar technologies, The Residents have won several awards for their multimedia projects, and Ralph Records, a record label focusing on avant-garde music, was started by them. Actually they are more an art collective than a classic band. The Residents – as they declare – are “four people who dabble in the arts, they make music, videos, perform, and generally have a pretty good time.” Well, “Lonely Teenager” is pretty dark, but still colorful, surprising and exciting material. Mostly navigating on some strangely colored space rock/psychedelic fields, “Lonely Teenager” is a trip into a dark labyrinth of conscience. Read more The Residents – Lonely Teenager (2011)
